Germany is Eliminated and Russia Withdraws
The Great War has completely destroyed German influence in the Near East. In the way of any resumption of German enterprise in Turkey are formidable obstacles which are not likely to be removed for some time. To begin with, the Turks themselves will not encourage German attempts to recover the Bagdad Railway or other property rights which were liquidated by the Treaty of Versailles. Among Turkish Nationalists there is satisfaction that Turkey has “shaken off the yoke of the ambitious leaders who dragged the country into the general war on the side of Germany” and has got rid of the “arrogance” of the Germans who infested the Near East during the last years of the war. Resentment at German military domination of Turkey during 1917 and 1918 will not soon disappear.[1]
Furthermore, Germany possesses neither the disposition nor the power to regain her former preëminence in the Near East. The confiscation by the Treaty of Versailles of private property in foreign investments has set a precedent which will make German investors—as well as prudent investors everywhere—extremely chary of utilizing their funds for the promotion of such enterprises as the Bagdad Railway. The surplus production and surplus capital of Germany may be absorbed by reparations payments or attracted to such enterprises as the reconstruction of the German merchant marine. But the Drang nach Osten has become a thing of the past. The dismemberment of the Austrian Empire and the erection of the Jugoslav Kingdom have shut off German access, through friendly states, to the Balkan Peninsula and Asiatic Turkey. Formidable customs barriers will stand in the way of overland trade with the Near East and render railway traffic from “Berlin to Bagdad” unprofitable. Defeat and disarmament have destroyed German prestige in the Moslem world. Democratization of both Germany and Turkey, it is hoped, will render increasingly difficult the kind of secret intrigue that characterized Turco-German relations during the régime of William II and of Abdul Hamid. If Germany returns to the Near East in the next generation or two, it is not likely to be in the rôle of an Imperial Germany promoting railway enterprises of great economic and strategic importance.
Russian diplomatic policy toward Turkey has likewise undergone important changes. Imperial Russia had been a bitter opponent of Imperial Germany in the Bagdad Railway project. Imperial Russia had conspired with Great Britain and France to bring about the collapse and dismemberment of the Ottoman Empire. Imperial Russia was the “traditional enemy” of the Turk. But Imperial Russia was destroyed in 1917 by military defeat and social revolution. Regardless of the pronunciamentos of bourgeois imperialists like Professor Milyukov, revolutionary Russia was certain to look upon the Near Eastern question in a new light. Political and economic disorganization incidental to the war and the revolution would have made it imperative for any government in Russia to curtail its imperialistic pretensions. And with the advent of Bolshevism the outcome was certain. A government which was anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist could not sanction Russian “spheres of interest” or Russian territorial aggrandizement at the expense of Turkey. A government which preached “self-determination of peoples” and “no annexations” could not confirm the secret treaties of 1915–1916. A government which was engaged in repelling foreign invasion and in resisting counter-revolutionary insurrections had to keep within strict limits its military liabilities. Therefore, Soviet Russia speedily foreswore any intention of occupying Constantinople, declared unreservedly for a free Armenia, and proceeded forthwith to withdraw its troops from Persia. These measures were considered “a complete break with the barbarous policy of bourgeois civilization which built the prosperity of the exploiters among the few chosen nations upon the enslavement of the laboring population in Asia,” as well as an expression of Bolshevist Russia’s “inflexible determination to wrest humanity from the talons of financial capital and imperialism, which have drenched the earth with blood in this most criminal of wars.”[2]
Turkish Nationalist resistance to the Treaty of Sèvres met with a sympathetic response on the part of Bolshevist Russia, and on March 16, 1921, the Government of the Grand National Assembly and the Government of the Russian Socialist Federated Soviet Republic signed at Moscow a treaty to confirm “the solidarity which unites them in the struggle against imperialism.” By the terms of this treaty Russia refused to recognize the validity of the Treaty of Sèvres or of any other “international acts which are imposed by force.” Russia ceded to Turkey the territories of Kars and Ardahan, in the Caucasus region, as a manifestation of full accord with the principles of the National Pact. The Soviet Republic, “recognizing that the régime of the capitulations is incompatible with the national development of Turkey, as well as with the full exercise of its sovereign rights, considers null and void the exercise in Turkey of all functions and all rights under the capitulatory régime.” In particular, Russia freed Turkey “from any financial or other obligations based on international treaties concluded between Turkey and the Government of the Tsar.” As regards the construction of railways in Anatolia, the Soviet Government completely reversed the former policy of Imperial Russia, which was to oppose all such railways as a strategic menace.[3] It was now provided that, “with the object of facilitating intercourse between their respective countries, both Governments agree to take in concert with each other all measures to develop and maintain within the shortest possible time, railway, telegraphic, and other means of communication,” as well as measures “to secure the free and unhampered traffic of passengers and commodities between the two countries.” Finally, both countries agreed to stand together in resisting all foreign interference in their domestic affairs: “Recognizing that the nationalist movements in the East,” reads the treaty, “are similar to and in harmony with the struggle of the Russian proletariat to establish a new social order, the two contracting parties assert solemnly the rights of these peoples to freedom, independence, and free choice of the forms of government under which they shall live.”[4]
No more complete disavowal of Russian imperialism could be desired by the New Turkey. It is by no means certain, however, that Russia will continue indefinitely to pursue so magnanimous a policy in the Near East. With the development of her natural resources and the extension of industrialism, it is not improbable that Russia—in common with the other Great Powers—will once again feel the urge to imperialism. Raw materials, markets, the maintenance of unimpeded routes of commercial communication, and opportunities for profitable investment of capital are likely to be considered—in the present anarchic state of international relations—as essential to an industrial state under working-class government as to an industrial state under bourgeois administration. If such be the case, Russian economic penetration in Turkey and Persia may be resumed, and Russian eyes may once more be cast covetously at Constantinople. “In Mongolia and Tibet, in Persia and Afghanistan, in Caucasia and at Constantinople, the Russian has been pressing forward for three hundred years,” writes an eminent American geographer, “and no system of government can stand that denies him proper commercial outlets.”[5]
Nevertheless, whatever be the future policy of Russia in the Near East, for the present the Russian Republic has no economic or strategic interests which are inconsistent with the national development of the Turkish people. Certainly Russia has neither the economic nor the political resources to demand a share in the Bagdad Railway or to seek for herself other railway concessions in Anatolia. And the Western Powers are little likely to heed the wishes of the Soviet Government until such time as those wishes are rendered articulate in a language the Western Powers understand—the language of power.